Hair (film)
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| Hair | |
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| Directed by | Miloš Forman |
| Produced by | Michael Butler Lester Persky |
| Written by | Gerome Ragni James Rado |
| Starring | John Savage Treat Williams Beverly D'Angelo Annie Golden Dorsey Wright Donnie Dacus Cheryl Barnes Richard Bright |
| Music by | Galt MacDermot |
| Release date(s) | March 14, 1979 |
| Running time | 121 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Hair is a 1979 film based on the musical of the same name. It was directed by Miloš Forman, who was nominated for a César Award for his work on the film. Cast members include Treat Williams, John Savage, Beverly D'Angelo, Don Dacus of the rock band Chicago, Annie Golden, Nell Carter and Ellen Foley.
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[edit] Plot Summary
[edit] Claude meets the tribe in Central Park
The movie begins in a small town in Oklahoma, where a young man named Claude Hooper Bukowski (John Savage) boards a bus for New York City, where he is to be drafted to fight in Vietnam. Once he arrives in New York, he encounters a tribe of hippies in Central Park, including George Berger (Treat Williams), the leader, Jeannie, a young pregnant girl, Hud, a black hoodlum with a large afro, and Woof, a small blond with long hair. The four befriend Claude and share some dope with him. He spends the night with them and some other neighborhood hippies. The next morning, as he is ready to leave, George shows Claude a newspaper photo of Shiela Francis (Beverly D'Angelo), a beautiful young girl he'd seen the previous day riding a horse with her friends. Shiela's parents are having a debutante ball for her, so George asks Claude if he wants to crash the party with him and his tribe in order to meet her. Reluctantly at first, he agrees.
[edit] Debutante ball
The five show up uninvited outside during some boring lawn activities. Shiela and her friends secretly get high in her room before dinner. At dinner, George bluntly makes a toast to Claude, telling everyone that Claude's in love with Shiela and wants to look at her for a few minutes to have a clear picture of her in his mind when he goes off to fight in Vietnam. Meanwhile, her father tries to get them kicked out and the butler calls the police. Before the cops arrive, George and his friends create more havoc. George ends up dancing on the dinner table singing "I Got Life" and breaks several dishes before he and his friends are arrested.
[edit] Imprisonment
The judge sentences the five of them to 30 days or pay a $50 fine. Only Claude has $50, so at first he decides to pay, but George finally persuades him to wait for him to get the money to get them all out. George first tries to get Shiela to persuade her father to bail them out, but she refuses. Finally George asks his parents for the money and his mother agrees to pay him.
[edit] The hippie demonstration in Central Park
Once out of prison, the five go back to Central Park and meet up with thousands of protesting hippies. Shiela also shows up there and apologizes for her younger brother, who'd behaved rudely to George. George and Claude join a group of hippies in line to get high on LSD. Claude gets the last sample and George misses out. Claude then experiences some weird hallucinations involving him dancing with Shiela, going to church with her and marrying her, getting her pregnant with a single kiss, and watching her fly around the inside of the church. The hallucination ends with her and the wedding party falling into a fire and the church doors closing him inside, along with the fire.
[edit] The Prank
By nightfall, after the demonstration has finished, George and his tribe spend some time looking around for Claude. They finally find him alone, still high from LSD. They then decide to go swimming naked in a small pond. Claude decides to take Shiela home, but she gets nervous, so she decides to go home by herself. Insultedly, Claude decides to join the tribe in the pond. Once Shiela sees him dive in naked, she decides to do the same. The two chat for awhile in the nude in the pond. Meanwhile, the tribe take their clothes and sneak away behind the bushes. Once Shiela discovers that everyone is gone and their clothes are missing, she gets angry. She runs out and hails a cab, who is all to eager to pick her up. Then the tribe shows up from behind the bushes with her and Claude's clothes. Claude gets mad at them for pulling this prank and insists that they return her clothes, though they want Claude to do so. They also become upset at Claude once he makes it clear that he still intends to go to the Army the next morning to begin his boot camp training.
[edit] Boot camp
Hesitantly, Claude goes to the induction center the next morning and they send him to a base in Nevada for his boot camp training. Once there, he writes a letter to Shiela, which she shows to George and the tribe. Shiela suggests that they all write him back, but George decides that they should all go visit him in Nevada. Shiela doesn't think George is serious, wondering how he will make the trip without a car. Meanwhile, Hud's ex-fiancee, along with her young son, finds Hud with his friends and interrogates him about Jeannie, who is pregnant, asking him if she's carrying his child. He says he doesn't know whether the child is his or Woof's. He tries to insist that she go home, but she doesn't want to. She sings a very moving performance of "Easy to be Hard", showing her grief. Finally, Hud agrees to take her along with the rest of the gang to Nevada. To get there, they end up stealing Shiela's father's Lincoln town car from her brother. They take a 5-day road trip to Nevada. Once they arrive at the gate, the guard won't let them in. They manage to sneak in by stealing another car belonging to one of the soldiers, whom Shiela seduces in order to get him out of his uniform. The tribe drive off with his car and leave him naked on the road.
[edit] The Tribe's visit
With the extra car and the soldier's uniform, the tribe is now able to get into the gate to visit Claude. They cut George's hair and George puts on the uniform and drives the stolen car through the gate, passing as a soldier. George goes to Claude's barracks and orders him to report outside for duty. Once outside, he shows Claude who he really is. Claude is delighted to see him. George tries to get Claude to sneak into the trunk, but Claude refuses, realizing that he must show up for duty. George tells him that Shiela and the whole gang are there and want to see him. Once Claude shows his curiosity, George decides to take Claude's place in boot camp. He tells Claude to take off his uniform and they exchange uniforms. George then goes into the barracks in Claude's place, while Claude drives off to meet the rest of the tribe. Claude spends an hour or so with the tribe. Then tragedy strikes. While Claude is gone with George in his place, his unit receives orders for shipment to Vietnam. The drill sergeant orders the unit to prepare for overseas movement. George becomes terrified, not knowing what to do. With no other choice, he ends up going out with the rest of the unit. Meanwhile, Claude returns to his unit to find them having left. He runs to try to catch up with them, but they end up boarding a plane for Vietnam. Shortly thereafter, George gets killed in combat. In the final scene of the movie, the tribe gather around George's grave in Arlington Park near Washington D.C. Then a huge group of hippies gather around demonstrating and singing the final song, "Let the Sunshine In".
[edit] Differences between the stage production and the film
The film omits the songs "Abie Baby," "Air," "My Conviction," "Frank Mills," and "What a Piece of Work is Man" from the musical. These songs were originally recorded for the film, but were eventually cut, as they slowed the pace of the film. They can be found on a special anniversary version of the Hair soundtrack. While the songs "Don't Put It Down" and "Somebody To Love" are not specifically sung by characters in the movie, they are both utilized as background or instrumental music for scenes at the army base. They are several other differences from songs in the movie and as they appear on the soundtrack, mainly in omitted verses and different orchestrations.
The show also changes and solidifies what was originally a flimsy plot. Many of the songs have been shortened, sped up, rearranged, or assigned to different characters to allow for the differences in plot. Opinions are mixed as to whether the film was an improvement over the stage show.
In the original stage show, the character Claude Bukowski is a hippie who eventually joins the army and is sent to Vietnam. In the movie, the plot was changed so that Claude comes to New York City from Oklahoma after he is drafted and befriends a group of hippies before being sent to Army training camp. They introduce him to their drugged-up style of living, and eventually drive to Nevada to visit him at a training camp. Also, in the original, Claude was from "Manchester, England," which explained why he sung a song with that title. The song remains in the film, though with a joking introduction by Berger - "he just got off the boat" - to make it apply to an Oklahoman Claude.
[edit] Songs sung in the film
- Aquarius
- Sodomy
- Donna
- Hashish
- Colored Spade
- Manchester
- I'm Black/Ain't Got No
- I Got Life
- Hair
- L.B.J.
- Electric Blues/Old Fashioned Melody
- Hare Krishna
- Where Do I Go
- Black Boys
- White Boys
- Walking in Space
- Easy to be Hard
- 3-5-0-0
- Good Morning Starshine
- The Flesh Failures/Let the Sunshine In
[edit] See also
- Hair - the original stage production
- List of counterculture films
[edit] External links
- Hair at the Internet Movie Database
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